Monday, August 31, 2009

It's been an over-arching theme on Lost from the start. Charlie wrote it on the tape of his fingers. Flashbacks showed the audience the sometimes incredible series of events that led to each character ending up on the Island. As time progressed, it seemed that each person had a deeper purpose for being on the Island - be it to save someone else, improve themselves, or perhaps even save the world. Even though last season's finale hinted that perhaps Jacob (or AJ) were pulling at the strings of destiny along the way, ensuring that these characters ended up on the Island, it still feels like our characters were all destined to end up on the Island. Heck, Lost even adopted the tagline of "Destiny Calls" before Season Five began - and teased a "Destiny Found" promo after it ended.

In a weird, twisted way, this same concept applies to how Lost has interacted with my life. Without it, I probably wouldn't be married to my smoking hot wife. Without it, I wouldn't have a Blog that gives me a creative outlet for my over-analytical nature. Without it, I wouldn't have proof that someone cares about the volumes and volumes I write about television and pop culture. All in all, just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Dave Matthews Band - Lost has had a profound affect on my life in a very positive way. It's almost like I was destined to find Lost. It was fate.

So it seems only fitting that with Lost in its final season, fate steps in to take the obsession to a whole new level. Once again I'm going to find Lost - but quite literally this time.

I'm going to Hawaii.

As luck would have it, I ended up picking up a project at work that requires I head to Hawaii at the end of September. Once the "working" part of the trip is completed, I'm sticking around for another week to explore the Islands, listen to Jack Johnson music, stumble upon Lost locales, and generally pretend that I am on Lost. It's going to be great.

Why do you care about any of this?

Well, I turn to you, loyal readers, to tell me what I need to do while on the Islands. Who has been there before? What are the "must see" places and attractions? Which cast and crew members of Lost have been secretly reading this Blog for the past five years that want to hook me up with a set visit?

I'll probably do a little of the "touristy" stuff on Oahu, but then would like to branch out and explore some less popular areas - so I'm looking for some suggestions there as well.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

There seem to be two predominant questions the Lost Community is focused on leading up to its final season:

What will the storyline for Season Six center around?

What will be the “flashes” of Season Six?

In this post, I’ll give you my opinion on both.

In thinking about how Lost is going to wrap up, I found myself thinking about the first season. Damon and Carlton have mentioned that Season Six is going to feel like Season One, which makes a lot of sense to me. Consider this – there’s no way that the Lost creators could have known that their show would be such a smash hit before it premiered. We’ve been told that the complete storyline of Lost has been laid out from the start – but it’s not as though they had six seasons of Lost planned from the beginning. It got me thinking – what if Lost had been a total failure? Would it have been possible to scrap a lot of the details and tell the basic story of Lost in 22 episodes, had it been cancelled after its first season?

As complex as the Lost storyline is, your initial response is “no f-ing way” – but I can’t help but think that the writers had a Plan B to tell their story in much fewer episodes, just in case. In a Cliff’s Notes version of Lost, it seems possible to cut out all the stuff about the Dharma Initiative, the Tailers, the Freighters, the Oceanic Six leaving (and returning to) the Island, the time travel, and even whole characters like Desmond and the Widmores. Strip away all those details and you would be left with the “basic” story of Lost – a story about a plane crash on a mysterious Island, and the discovery of that Island… a story that could quite possibly have been told in one season, if needed.

What the heck does this tangent have to do with the two questions from the start?

If you think about it, a good chunk of that “basic” story of Lost has yet to be answered – how much do we really know about the Island and its funky powers? What about the mysterious Others? The answer is “not much”. It only seems fitting that Lost’s final season returns to its roots from the first season and answers the questions first posed in its first episodes.

That means finally getting some legit information out of Alpert (and probably Ilana’s Crew as well) about who the Others are and what they are tasked with – protecting the Island? Serving Jacob? Saving the world? In the process, we’ll also learn exactly what powers the Island does and doesn’t have and why it’s so important… or if it’s those ON the Island that make it so “special” (Jacob and AJ). Once those questions are answered, it will be very clear what role our Survivors have in all this – be it in helping to protect the Island or joining forces in the battle of good vs. evil for control of the Island.

That’s what I think Season Six is going to center around – at least as of right now.

Notice what’s missing? Anything related to “alternate realities”.

It seems like everyone is assuming that Season Six is going to be some sort of alternate version of Season One, with some suggesting that Oceanic 815 never crashes – and others that it still crashes, but now Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, and Jin have pre-existing memories of the events from the first time through (thanks to Jacob touching them). I just can’t see either of those storylines being very satisfying (or possible).

Some of the speculation stems from the following videos shown at Comic-Con:

Some of the speculation stems from the rumors about formerly dead cast members Charlie, Boone and Juliet coming back in Season Six for a few episodes.

But there are a ton of problems with this alternate reality / changed future storyline.

For one, if Oceanic 815 never crashes on the Island, the show is done. None of the characters would know each other, the past five seasons would (cheaply) be undone, and the show ends with everyone miserable. Even if the Jacob-touched characters retained their memories, it would be a re-hash of last season to have them have to gather up characters and find a way to return to the Island.

If Oceanic 815 still crashes, but our Jacob-touched Survivors are cognizant of the events from the first time around, they could do things differently – better perhaps, to prevent some character deaths – but it would still be cheating the audience out of the first five seasons. Also, even if they’ve got characters like Charlie and Boone signed on to guest star – they’re still missing a lot of other Season One characters, including some that are impossible to bring back like a young Walt.

If Season Six features “flashes” that show “what could have been” if things had worked out differently, that wouldn’t ruin the main Island storyline – but what would the point be? It seems like a waste of time to show stuff that “could have, but didn’t” happen based on the actions of our characters.

So how do we explain the return of the dead characters? And what are the Season Six “flashes” going to be all about? It brings us to question number two…

Given the direction I’m guessing the storyline will go (learning about the Others / the Island), it would make total sense to revisit some of the scenes from Season One (and earlier seasons) – but not in an “alternate reality”… but from an alternate perspective – like from that of the Others.

How fantastic would it be to finally learn what the Others have been doing for the past five seasons while our Survivors have been on the Island? Have they been watching? Have they subtly influenced them (in a positive or negative way)? These flashbacks could offer answers to a lot of the open questions from earlier seasons, fleshing out the storyline while giving us insight into the last “mystery group” on the Island – the Others. It’s the story we’ve been waiting for since Season Three, but have only received hints and teases up until this point. Obviously the writers couldn’t reveal the full truth behind the Others until now – because they hold the key to the fundamental questions about what the Island is and what needs to be done to protect it / the world.

It also allows us to have a “curtain call” for some characters that we’ve lost over the years, as they appear in the Others flashbacks. Not only does this not negate the previous five seasons, it strengthens them, makes them richer, and gives us the chance to view them in a different light. We pick up right where things left off, the past has not been changed, we jump right into the action, learning more about the past along the way, find out the mysteries of the Island, have a battle of good vs. evil, save the world, and have our characters find redemption / death / closure to their plot lines.